The Waylaid Count (10)

 10

“What did you want to talk to me about so privately?” I asked my companion, as I poured out for him a second cup of tea. The General gazed into my eyes for a moment as he took the proffered cup. I was a little nervous he was going to kiss me for a moment, but thankfully, he recovered. 

“You radiate the very joy and exuberance of life, and I am afraid I have forgotten,” he said.

“You have forgotten! That is surely very wrong of you? You gave me to understand that it was something terribly important. But of course, I knew it couldn’t be, because no man, and especially no General, ever discussed anything really important with an underling like me.”

“Recollect, Major Raskelis, that this afternoon, here, I am not the General.”

“You are Count Staanbick again, is that it?”

He started. “For you only,” he said, unconsciously lowering his voice. “Major Raskelis, I particularly wish that no one here should know that I was in Aux Thorksworth last spring.”

“An affair of State?” I smiled.

“An affair of State,” he replied soberly. “Even Lodimmick doesn’t know. It was strange that we should be fellow guests at that quiet out-of-the-way inn—strange but delightful. I shall never forget that rainy afternoon that we spent together in the Museum. Let us talk about that.”

“About the rain or the museum?” I countered.

“I shall never forget that afternoon,” he repeated, ignoring the lightness of my question.

“Nor I,” I murmured, remembering the beautiful artwork.

“You, too enjoyed it?” he said eagerly.

“The sculptures were magnificent,” I replied.

“Ah! So they were! Tell me, Major Raskelis, how did you discover my identity.”

“I must not say,” I answered. “That is my secret. Do not seek to discover it. Who knows what horrors you might discover if you probed too far?” I laughed, but I laughed alone. The General remained pensive and almost brooding.

“I never thought I would see you again,” he said.

“Why not?”

“One never sees again those whom one wishes to see.”

“As for me, I was perfectly convinced that we should meet again.”

“Why?”

“Because I always get what I want,” I said, flashing him my winningest grin.

“Then you wanted to see me again?”

“Certainly. You interested me extremely. I have never met another man who could talk so well about sculpture as the Count Staanbick.”

“Do you really always get what you want, Major Raskelis?”

“Of course.”

“That is because your father is so rich, I suppose?”

“Oh, no, it isn’t!” I said. “It’s simply because I always do get what I want. It’s got nothing to do with Father at all.”

“But Baron Raskelis is extremely wealthy?”

“Wealthy isn’t the word, Count. There is no word. It’s positively awful the amount of dollars poor Pops makes. And the worst of it is that he can’t help it. He told me once that when a man had made ten billion-notes no power on earth could stop those ten billion-notes from growing into twenty. And so it continues.

“I spend what I can, but I can’t come near coping with it, and of course Papa is no use whatsoever at spending.”

“And you have no mother?”

“Who told you I had no mother?” I asked quietly.

“I—er—inquired about you,” he replied with equal candor and humility.

“In spite of the fact that you never hoped to see me again?”

“Yes, in spite of that.”

“How funny!” I said and lapsed into a meditative silence.

“Yours must be a wonderful existence,” said the General. “I envy you.”

“You envy me—what? My father’s wealth?”

“No,” he said; “your freedom and your responsibilities.”

“I have no responsibilities,” I remarked.

“Pardon me,” he said; “you have, and the time is coming when you will feel them.”

“I’m only a young girl flitting in the breeze. I go where it wills,” I murmured with sudden simplicity. “As for you, General, surely you have sufficient responsibilities of your own?”

“I?” he said sadly. “I have no responsibilities. I am a nobody—a man who has to pretend to be very important, always taking immense care never to do anything that a someone this high in government ought not to do!”

“But if your nephew, Count Yougen, were to die, would you not come to the throne of South Quaros, and would you not then have all these responsibilities which you so much desire?”

“Yougen die?” said General Ribereus in a curious tone. “Impossible. He is the perfection of health. In three months, he will be married. No, I shall never be anything but a General, the most despicable of creatures.”

“But what about the State secret which you mentioned? Is not that a responsibility?”

“Ah!” he said. “That is over. That belongs to the past. It was an accident in my dull career. I shall never be Count Staanbick again.”

“Who knows?” I said. “By the way, is not Count Yougen coming here today? Major Lodimmick told us so.”

“See!” answered the General, standing up and leaning over me. Whispering, he said, “I am going to confide in you. I don’t know why, but I am.”

“Don’t betray State secrets,” I warned him, smiling into his face.

Just then the door of the room was unceremoniously opened.

“Go right in,” my father’s voice said sharply. 

Two men entered, bearing a prone form on a stretcher, and Pops followed them.

I sprang up at the same time my father saw me and started.

“I didn’t know you were in here, Vixie. Here,” he said to the two men, “out again.”

“Why!” I exclaimed, gazing at the form on the stretcher, “it’s Major Lodimmick!”

“It is,” my father acquiesced. “He’s dead,” he added laconically. “I’d have broken it to you more gently had I known. Your pardon, General.” There was a pause.

“Lodimmick dead!” General Ribereus whispered under his breath, and he kneeled by the side of the stretcher. “What does this mean?”

“I’m not really sure. The poor fellow was just walking across the Twilight Dunes toward the Black Hole Bar when he fell down. A zip-line attendant who saw him says he was walking very quickly. At first, I thought it was heatstroke, but it couldn’t have been, though that deck is particularly warm. It must be heart disease. But anyhow, he’s dead. We did what we could. I’ve sent for the ship’s doctor and for the ship’s authorities. I suppose there’ll have to be an inquest.”

My father stopped there. The silence that filled the room was awkward and solemn I could not take my eyes off the dead youth. His features were slightly drawn, and his eyes closed. That was all. He might have been asleep.

“My poor Lodimmick!” exclaimed the General, his voice broken. “And I was angry because he did not meet me today!”

“Are you sure he is dead, Pops?” I asked.

“You’d better leave, Vixie,” was my father’s only reply. I stood still and for some reason I began to sob quietly. On the previous night, I had secretly made fun of Cagginald Lodimmick. I had deliberately set myself to get information from him on a topic in which I happened to be specially interested, and I had got it. I laughed to myself the whole while at his youthful simplicity—his vanity, his transparent cunning, his absurd airs. I had not liked him. I had even distrusted him and decided that he was not “nice.” But now, as he lay on the stretcher, these things were forgotten. I went so far as to reproach myself for them. Such is the strange commanding power of death when it is so unexpected.

“Oblige me by taking the poor fellow to my suite,” said the General with a gesture to the attendants. “Surely the doctor will come soon.”

For a fraction of a second, I wished my father had never bought the Ritzavoy XI.

A quarter of an hour later General Ribereus, my father, the ships doctor, and the ship’s inspector, who had introduced himself as Detective Zimslow Marshaggins, were with me in the General’s suite in its living room. The doctor had just finished examining the remains of Major Cagginald Lodimmick.

“Well?” I asked, glancing at the doctor.

The doctor was a big, boyish-looking man, with keen, quizzical eyes.

“It is not heart disease,” he answered.

“Not heart disease?” my father asked.

“No.”

“Then what is it?” asked the General.

“I may be able to answer that question after the postmortem,” said the doctor. “I certainly can’t answer it now. The symptoms are unusual to a degree.”

Detective Marshaggins began to write in a notebook.

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